‘We’re on a journey to become a £100m business’: Databarracks chairman

Mike Osborne talks Acumen acquisition, leadership hires and what’s driving the company’s next phase of growth

Databarracks is targeting £100m in revenue to build on its recent takeover of Acumen and the rising demand for what it describes as “unified resilience” services.

Speaking to CRN, chairman Mike Osborne says the company expects double-digit growth this financial year and would not rule out further acquisitions as it scales its business and broadens its resilience capabilities.

“We’re on a journey to be a £100m turnover business,” Osborne says.

“We’ve been reviewing our five-year plan and asking ourselves whether that’s too ambitious or perhaps not ambitious enough.”

He says the company’s confidence stems from what it believes is a structural shift in the resilience market as organisations place greater emphasis on their ability to recover from cyberattacks and wider operational disruption.

Databarracks’ acquisition of Acumen

The latest step in that strategy came with the acquisition of Acumen last month, a move Osborne says boosts Databarracks’ ability to provide both technical resilience and broader organisational resilience services.

Unlike traditional MSPs, Osborne says Databarracks specialises almost exclusively in resilience rather than general IT support.

“Our proposition is to be experts at the technical side of things, but equally experts at all of those other aspects of holistic recovery capability.”

While IT recovery remains fundamental, he argues organisations also need support around communications, regulatory engagement, insurance investigations and wider operational recovery following major incidents.

The acquisition builds on Databarracks’ earlier purchase of business continuity consultancy PlanB Consulting in 2024, which expanded the company’s capabilities beyond disaster recovery.

“As that part of the business continued to grow, we started looking for another acquisition that could further strengthen our proposition.”

It also purchased Derbyshire-HQ data management and business-critical IT infrastructure solutions provider COOLSPIRiT later that year.

Having known Acumen founder Andy Osborne for around two decades, the Databarracks chair says both the cultural fit and customer profile made the business an obvious target.

“I knew culturally Andy would fit in because culture is a big part of any acquisition,” he tells CRN.

“The customer base he had aligned very closely with ours and with our target customer profile.

“It was a natural opportunity that ticked all the boxes.”

Integration and M&A plan

Following the takeover, Andy Osborne will remain with the business, focusing on customer engagement, industry education and simulation exercises rather than the day-to-day responsibilities of running a company.

According to Mike Osborne, mentoring the next generation of resilience professionals will also become an important part of his role.

“There’s nothing better than being able to learn from somebody who’s actually lived through these incidents.”

Databarracks is keeping the door open to further acquisitions.

“I certainly wouldn’t rule it out,” explains Osborne.

“You make acquisitions for scale, for expertise or sometimes to enter new geographies.

“If the right opportunity comes along, then absolutely we’ll consider it.”

He explains that the increasing demand for integrated resilience services means the company will continue evaluating opportunities that add capability and support future expansion.

Databarracks’ customer reach

Databarracks now supports close to 600 customers following the Acumen buy, ranging from small organisations with limited internal IT expertise to large regulated enterprises.

The company operates offices in Glasgow, Chesterfield and London while delivering resilience services internationally through public cloud platforms including AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.

While its sovereign resilience cloud is based entirely in the UK, Osborne says Databarracks can support customers globally through hyperscale cloud providers.

“We’ve got customers outside the UK because many of our largest UK customers are global organisations,” he says.

“They want one partner that can support them internationally, and that’s our proposition.”

Recent leadership changes

Alongside acquisitions, Databarracks has revamped its exec team in the past 12 months.

Recent appointments include Michelle Green as marketing director, Darren Tingley as services and technology director, Lee Denham to infrastructure and technical operations director and Jason Renshaw as operations director.

According to Osborne, those changes are designed to ensure the business has experience of scaling organisations while maintaining the culture built since Databarracks was founded in 2003.

“As you grow, the demands on the executive team grow as well,” he says.

“You need people who have experienced scale and know how to grow at pace.

“At the same time, it’s important to balance that with people who understand the culture of the business.”

Resilience market nears turning point

Moving forward, Osborne believes the resilience market is approaching a significant turning point.

He notes that organisations are increasingly recognising that preventing every cyberattack is impossible, shifting investment towards ensuring they can recover quickly when incidents occur.

“We really do sense a sea change in the market,” he says.

“Our pipeline suggests it’s already happening.

“Over the next 12 to 18 months we expect organisations to place much greater emphasis on being confident they can recover if they’re no longer able to pay ransomware demands.”